u/USSR89

Hello from Germany again, it has been very hot here (and now it's quite cold).
I managed to source some cool wood (500+km trip), but it was worth it! I also upgraded my wood storage and now have enough wood to be very happy and I can build whatever I want :D

I wanted to make something cool geometrically, so I made that pattern on second picture (not sure what it's called, but there are many variations of it, this is my variation), I think it went really well. Then I wanted do use some of the new wood to create both end grain and edge/face grain boards, depending on the wood. For example some of the wood had really nice face grain pattern, so I really had to make a board with it that would showcase it, some had really nice end-grain pattern so i did that.

I also spent some time making coasters from the offcuts from these boards and they ended up nice too, but they took way too long to sand to a point where I was satisfied.

Woods used in these boards in total are.. : American black walnut, Maple, Padouk, Wenge, Steamed beech, Birch, EU Oak, Ash, Thermo Ash, Zebrano, Sipo mahogany, Purple heart + one wood i'm not 100% sure what it is it could be bubinga or sapele (neither me nor the seller were 100% sure)

Can you help me ID this wood? One picture is of it being used in an end-grain cutting board and one picture is of the wood after being planed.

Thank you

Hello from Brandenburg (Germany) again!

I managed to source some Padouk and I had to make some boards with it.

The brick one is a request board for my mom, she wanted something dark, the silver feet are to match her kitchen. The rest is just me having fun.
I also reorganized my workshop a bit, installed wall racks for wood. And I also had an adventure to buy maple from one guy 130km away from me, but it needs to sit for a bit as it was not fully dried. (but I do have loads of maple now too)

There is one edge grain board there as I wanted to see how it will look and honestly I love it, I chose an interesting piece of Padouk for it and used some walnut with sapwood to encase it. Beech for the large parts and purple heart for the edges.

The other two boards, one focuses more on walnut and beech/ash grain orientation(it has a tiny padouk piece, but it's very dark) and the other one is focusing on Padouk encased in maple and I think it turned absolutely stunning - it looks like flowing lava, the padouk piece i chose has light inner part and dark outer part, the dark outer part connects to the maple strips which makes it stand out even more. There is another thin strip of padouk and purple heart on the edges. The other light wood is birch and the orange-y one is beech.

I also took some time to use my cutoffs to create some spatulas :D but I don't have a spindle sander so I used my eccentric sander to sand them (my hands are still shaking from the vibrations), but they look good.

I'm not sure what I will make next week in terms of boards, but it will be fun regardless! For side project, I have finally received a hidden tang chef knife and I will make a handle for it, but I'm also thinking of making some unique "1knife" stand for it where it would float in the air.. we will see :D

Hello from Brandenburg again!

I've managed to source some walnut last friday evening, so I had to make some boards with it. I admit I got a bit too excited and made a lot, but some were really good learning experience, the full walnut one had quite a bit of tiny knots inside (once I cut it after first glue-up) and I was wondering what to do with it, but decide to create walnut dowels from the same wood and inlay them in all the parts that I did not like, it's definitely unique :D thanks to this experience I used it on another board later in the week.

Another great experience was making end-grain thin strips for the brick pattern and the (cascade?) pattern, in retrospect I should not have used beech for the cascade one so it would create the correct effect, but I made too many beech strips so I just used them. making them flat was hard and I had to figure out how to do it, since I don't have drum sander and I can't send them through thickness planer.

I also did some improvements on the sanding process for the handles, they are very smooth to the touch now like the rest of the board.

Some of the boards look thin compared to the other ones.. but they are not thin at all :D it's just some of the boards are really thick.

Also I saw a tiktok about wine bottle stands and decided to use some offcuts for it and it worked out great, one of the offcuts had a big crack so I inlaid some birch into it and that also worked out great, I will definitely explore inlays more in the future. And before someone asks, yes these work with empty bottles or half full bottles too, I personally tested it hah.

The most chaotic board with bunch of woods in there, is basically an unplanned one.. my offcut pile was growing so I just picked some wood of similar size and that's what came out of it after some arrangement. It had one knot in the oak part and i drilled that out and inserted a beech inlay there.

I think the nicest board here is the thickest one, the one with maple and purple heart in the middle and walnut on the edges I used a really nice piece of walnut for that one.

The brick pattern is very clean, I think I like it a lot even though kinda everyone makes these, it reminds me of the basket weave pattern i made last week, but the the brick did not require rigorous measurements like the basket weave.

I'm not sure what I will do next.. I had some padauk delivered yesterday so I made a "quick" edge grain board with it, it's being glued today. So that one will be done on Monday. (we can't use power tools here in Germany on Sundays anyway)

I will probably try to sort out my shop a bit and create some wall racks for lumber as it's currently taking space in my home gym :D

I will post again if there's something cool I made (individual board) or another "batch" post like this otherwise I'd be posting every other day.

American walnut was one of the wood species I was missing and I finally sourced some last weekend, though I had to drive far for it. But I'm really happy I did, because it looks stunning. I think it's entering the chopping block category at this thickness. It's a shame though it could have been thicker, but I had to take off a bit more than I wanted on the router sled.

I had to pair it with European maple and purple heart and I was considering if I should make 2 boards out of it or one board and I ended up making this beast. I was thinking if I should make the sapwood part face inside or outside, but I'm glad I made it face inside, so it would blend into the maple.

I also made a full walnut board from a worse piece of walnut, but it had many tiny knots inside and I was really not happy with it.. so I drilled those out and inlaid walnut dowels in there so it definitely has some character now xD will post that one later, it was a learning experience.

I decided to make an optical illusion pattern next, but I'm not sure if it will work. We will see.
But in short, since I have walnut now, I will add it where it makes sense.
I feel like I can try any color combination now since now I have : walnut, maple, birch, ash, beech, sipo, amaranth, oak, wenge, zebrano and I'm going to have some padauk soon too.

I'm located in Germany and the other day I walked past a pile of finger joint glued desk boards from Elm in Bauhaus and I said to myself, that would make a nice cutting board.. and that's where it all began :D
I have bought bunch of them since they were on sale and used them to experiment. I did a lot of research and fast forward couple months and I finally found a shop where I can buy proper lumber around my area and that has been around month ago (start of May), since then I made all these boards, with the most complex being the basket weave pattern, even there I have forked up a bit .. and realized i can't do 7 rows and it has to be 6 (or after flipping the pattern it would not work) so instead of making one big board as planned.. i made two smaller (still plenty big and thick tbh)
With every board and every pattern I have learned something new and it so much fun.
This week I have acquired some purple heart and have started putting it into the boards as accents strips.
Alongside that I have been building my woodworking workshop for this and it grows tool-by-tool! (still missing a jointer, so doing a workaround on thickness planer with a sled + shims/hotglue to make things flat)

I'm not going to include the workshop pictures, but i have built it from scratch as well (might be for different sub as this is about cutting boards)

I hope to get my hands on more american walnut, as I had only a little that I ordered online (it's very pricey here in germany.. i paid like 100€ for 3 small pieces). But I have used those 3 pieces to best of my ability and spread it across bunch of boards !

Hello,
I recently started making boards (as a hobby) and yesterday a finished this one that I'm happy with and will use myself, but now that kind of puts my best chef knife to a shame. So I would like to upgrade.

The board is 52x30x5 @ 5.4kg and is made from Sipo Mahagony, EU Maple, Beech, Ash and Birch end grain. I was thinking that I may attempt to make the handle myself from the same wood so it would match or just from Sipo Mahagony, so maybe I could just buy the blade itself.

This knife was gifted to me and overall I'm not a knife pro, I don't think I'd get the benefit of having a 500+ € knife, but I think up to 200€ makes sense.

Thank you